OPPOSITION fighters and their families began to evacuate towns and villages in the Barada Valley near the Syrian capital of Damascus yesterday as part of an agreement to return the primary water source for the capital to government control.

Four buses carrying 160 rebels and family members left the valley for oppositionheld Idlib province, in the northeast of the country where they will join thousands of other rebels and dissidents from the Damascus area.

The evacuation marks the end of a nearly six-week-long standoff between rebels and pro-government forces that led to severe water cuts to some five million people around Damascus for over a month.

Greater Damascus provincial governor Alaa Ibrahim said that water pressure would begin to return to Damascus today as engineers repair facilities destroyed during the fighting.

As the rebels prepared to leave, the Syrian military was working to remove land mines in a major development that caps weeks of fighting with rebels in the area.

The government’s recapture of the Barada Valley ends the deadlock over Ain el-Fijeh village, one of the fiercest battlefronts in Syria’s war.

The fighting had also trapped tens of thousands of civilians in the valley, where the water source is located.

Syrian state TV showed buses lined up to transport rebel fighters out of the village of Ain el-Fijeh, but Ibrahim said the evacuation will be delayed for a day due to rain storms and freezing temperatures.

The current ceasefire, brokered by Russia and Turkey and in place since December 30, was tested by the fighting in the valley, sparked by government allegations that rebels had poisoned the water source at Ain elFijeh, which the rebels denied.

The deal requires evacuation of rebel fighters who refuse to lay down their weapons.

The military media said that about 1,200 fighters are expected to surrender their weapons